


La Vida Loca

by GloriaMundi



Category: Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003)
Genre: M/M, Music, Sensory Deprivation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-02
Updated: 2003-11-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 18:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriaMundi/pseuds/GloriaMundi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mexico's secret weapon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	La Vida Loca

_...Me gusta la noche, me gustas tu..._

The music was killing him. Fucking Mexipop, perfect backdrop to the flies and the boredom and the sinus-ache of too much codeine. He was trying to think, trying to make some sense out of what next, and all he could hear was this fucking song, like static, like interference in his head. This song -- hell, the entire jukebox catalogue -- was Mexico's secret weapon. Next time it came on, he was going to get up off the bed, and go downstairs and across the street and into the bar, and find out who kept feeding the jukebox with pesos. Then he'd rip out the fucker's eyes, and see how he liked being stuck in the dark with someone else's favourite song playing for eternity.

Maybe that jukebox had some Nina Simone --

Well, shit. Another thing he wouldn't be doing any time soon: scanning the fly-speckled index cards on some half-lit Wurlitzer in a basement dive.

He flexed his fingers, relishing the small sting of sweat where his fingernails scratched the skin above his eyebrows.

The kid had been here yesterday. Maybe the day before. With El Mariachi. With -- much more interesting -- some mean pills that left Sands numb and about as happy as he was going to get. Shame he didn't have any more money to give the kid. You get what you pay for.

He'd put a bullet through the speaker of Maria's radio the day after she'd brought it upstairs for him. Like he wanted to know about the best beach holidays in this shitty Third World ghetto. The music they played between programmes drowned out everything else: people talking downstairs, traffic on the street, the early-warning jangle of El's comical mariachi suit.

Of course, it'd drowned out the fucking jukebox in the bar too.

_... me gusta marihuana, me gustas tu; me gusta colombiana ..._

"I have a drug problem," Sands had joked to Maria the night before. He wasn't sure if this was the same Maria who'd brought him the radio. Maybe her name wasn't Maria after all. She smelt (like the others) of cheap deodorant, female sweat, perfume and tobacco. When he was out of tobacco he'd send her to get some more, and sometimes she brought grass, too, to help him sleep.

He gave her dollar bills -- he'd had the kid sort the money in his wallet -- and she always kept the change. Hadn't he made her promise never to feed it to the jukebox? She didn't ask for money after she'd screwed him, and she didn't talk much. There'd been another girl, the week before, who'd thought he was joking when he told her not to touch his sunglasses. Sands didn't know her name, but he could remember the way her body had tightened around him, muscles spasming, when he broke her little finger.

That had made him come, and sparks had filled his eye sockets, like the Fourth of fucking July all over the deep black Mexican night inside his head. Not like last night. Last night, he'd been buried balls-deep in Maria, and because of the painkillers it had felt like nothing, which was a shame because he really, really wanted something to feel good.

Maria had just laughed when he made the joke about drugs, and wriggled a bit more. Probably butt-ugly: probably they all were. When he'd caught himself stroking her face, exploring the contours of her skull under the taut skin, he'd dug his fingers in and grinned when she squealed.

Now the drugs were wearing off again, starting with that dry-sinus itch. His stomach was clammy with sweat. Someone had smeared chilli oil -- or maybe it was napalm -- all over the mostly-healed gunshot wounds, and Sands wanted to rip his own skin off. No matter how quickly he moved, the pain was always there, like a shadow at the edge of his peripheral vision, waiting to pounce.

It was almost like a game.

"Fuck it," he said to the flies and the heat. He'd been staying here for nearly a fortnight, long enough to find his way around all the rooms on the top floor of the house. The bathroom was just across the landing; he'd found his way there the first day, no need for a nursemaid. Chair jammed under the door handle, clothes on the chair, gun and sunglasses on top of his clothes. The water here tasted rusty, but it was cool, and the noise drowned out that fucking song.

It felt good to wash the sweat away. Just the feel of his own hands on his skin was good. The headache was starting again, kicking in behind where his eyes had been. He stroked himself hard and fast, trying to catch his body by surprise and get off, but the pain caught up with him before he was more than half-hard. Even thinking of Ajedrez, closing hotly around him, tight and slick and wet -- even thinking of fucking her 'til she bled, fucking the bullethole in her belly, fucking her corpse and pulling out to spray rounds of come all over her -- even she wasn't enough to keep him going.

At least that belly wound had been a slow death.

The pain leapt on him as he was pulling on his jeans, and he had to sink to the floor and curl up and clench his teeth in the damp towel until it had backed off again.

_... me gusta la guitarra, me gustas tu..._

Mexico's other secret weapon was coming up the stairs: he could hear the bells. The kid wasn't with him today, which meant that El was going to mess around with dressings and ointments. He'd start talking, more to distract himself from the messy task than to have a friendly chat. There was nothing he could say that interested Sands at all. Might as well stay on the bathroom floor, breathing in gasps, smelling stale piss and vomit and strong disinfectant scented with artificial lemon.

On the other hand, El might have brought more drugs.

Getting his shirt on made the weakened muscles in his arm spasm, and then his fingers were clumsy on the buttons; and before he'd finished, El was banging on the door.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, mommy, I'm jus' fine," called Sands. If he'd died, if Barillo or his bitch-daughter had killed him, they'd have sent in the Marines. Because he had lived, he got some two-bit macho mariachi strutting and sneering around him instead. Sands intended to adjust the situation as soon as -- well, as soon as possible.

The bridge of his nose ached under the weight of the Raybans, as if the gouging had all been a nightmare and he had no worse than a broken nose and a pair of black eyes. He considered leaving the shades off, just to see -- Sands grinned -- just to _see_ how El would handle it.

He plastered that bright, empty smile over his face and opened the bathroom door.

"Good evening," said El. He was leaning in the open doorway of Sands' room. Sands could smell him; sweat, beer, a prickly overlay of oil and gunpowder.

"El," said Sands, gesturing towards the room. "Just passing? Or couldn't you resist the chance to play doctor again?"

"You need a real doctor," El said, unsmiling.

"Well, I'm sure you'll enjoy yourself," said Sands, heading back into his room with such purpose that El stood aside to let him pass.

Sands dragged a chair over to the window and sat down. He could feel the warmth of the evening sun on his damp skin. Across the street, the bar was filling up with workers from the factory. They'd turned the jukebox up.

_Te besa y te desnudo con tu ..._

"Between you and me, El, I don't like doctors any more," he said, laying the Raybans down like a winning hand. "Look at this! That's a doctor's work!"

He heard El's breath huff out, more likely exasperated than amused. At least he'd stopped sounding disgusted or horrified, so Sands guessed the sockets were healing okay.

It still hurt, even after he'd washed down today's pills (more bitter than the last ones) with a slug of tequila. Every light touch hurt. The heat of the sun made him want to squeeze his eyes shut against the light, and the damaged muscles around the empty sockets twitched idly as he bit his lip against the whole sordid, gentle act.

El didn't talk. He clicked his tongue at something. There was a sudden cold wet slick feeling that ripped down Sands' spine like a chainsaw. When it stopped, it didn't stop. It didn't feel done with.

After a moment he realised that his hand was locked around El's wrist, and El was keeping perfectly still.

"What the fuck was that?" His voice came out thin and wrong.

"Antibiotic," said El. His accent made the word exotic. "To stop infection."

"I don't want it."

El sighed. He didn't try to pull away. "You need a real doctor. He would tell you --"

"I don't want a doctor. I don't want anyone else to know there is an American, an American with _no eyes_, in this particular shithole of a town!"

"Then stop shouting about it," said El impassively. "You're sitting at an open --"

The jukebox in the bar started up again, something new with a bossa nova beat. Sands hadn't even noticed that single missing strand in the constant noise of the street. He swore, brief and explosive, and let go of El's wrist.

"It hurts," said El softly. "All the time, yes?"

"Twenty-four seven," Sands agreed brightly. He wanted to be sick. The calluses on El's fingers were like sandpaper. Sands ached with holding still. Another man's fingers, stroking him so intimately, making the scar tissue soft and slippery and tender. It hurt, it hurt, hurt, hurt ... The words fitted themselves into a bossa nova rhythm, and he wanted to claw the music out of his ears.

"Skullfucker," he complained, and swallowed hard. Out of nowhere he remembered that morning by the lake, cotton wool springing out of Belini's face while Sands was looking for --

_Y te dolera, si de verdad te toca ..._

The tequila and pills burnt at the bottom of Sands' throat. He swung at El -- yeah, blindly, of course blindly -- and felt the blow jolt El's hand on his face, El's shoulder bracing him. El was trying to hold him down and that made him panic, seeing red, stolen eyes somehow still presenting him with _red_, blood-colour ... and it hurt, hurt, and he wanted El to hit him again hard enough that he could make a noise after all.

After a while he realised that he wasn't moving. He'd stopped fighting, which meant --

"Shh," murmured El, not at all comfortingly, and that was reassuring.

He was on his back, half of his body on the shabby knotted rug, his bare feet on the worn floorboards at the edge of the room. El was more or less on top of him, not quite pinning him to the floor but certainly not inclined to let him up any time soon. His right hand was slippery with ointment, but it was holding Sands' left arm, which was still weak after the bullet had torn through it.

Sands felt an absurd urge to apologise, but he fought it down like the tequila and the pills. His eye sockets felt revolting, slimy and tingling, and the stuff was spread over half his face as well. He could smell El's sweat, and his breath, which was warm on Sands' face. He didn't smell anything like a woman. He was breathing hard, but so was Sands. El must have tied his hair back, because at least -- yeah, small mercy -- it wasn't sticking to Sands' face.

Across the street, someone had turned up the jukebox again.

_Tu te dejas arrastrar..._

El said nothing, and he didn't move. Sands shifted experimentally, and smirked.

"You get off on this, huh?" he demanded, bucking his hips up just to taunt the mariachi's shameful hardness.

But it was ...

Trouble was, he was helplessly hard too, just at the feeling of another man's -- of _El's_ \-- arousal, just at the sheer sensation of being held, even like this, even held down.

"Maybe I mistook you for a woman."

The rumble in El's voice might be amusement, or a macho growl. Sands couldn't tell. Like it mattered anyway, up close and personal like this. He started to laugh.

"What is funny?" El demanded suspiciously, and that was better: they were back to normal.

"Feels good," Sands leered, not because it was true (which it was) but to freak out El.

Sure enough, he was off Sands in a moment, moving angrily, staring out of the window -- it must be dark by now -- and breathing with deliberate regularity.

Sands exhaled, loud and slow, trying to hold on to the feeling of warm skin and weight. "El, you crazy fuck," he said fondly.

"Es ti que esta loco," El muttered. He hadn't looked back at Sands yet, and the noise from outside almost drowned out his words. It's you who is crazy.

"Well, shit." The chair was on its side against the wall. Sands used it to pull himself upright, still slightly dizzy. "You don't have to be crazy to do this. To work this beat." He groped for his sunglasses and slid them back on. The sting of cold plastic against his cheekbones made him feel safe.

El said nothing. Sands could hear him breathing.

"But it helps," Sands finished, grinning.

That damned song started playing on the jukebox again, and the pain chose that moment to slip back in and twist itself around his nerves. He didn't let it past his bright, blithe smile. All's well with the world. All's -- _fuck_ \-- well.

El chuckled. He was probably smiling too, now that everything was back to normal. Now that Sands was just the crazy American again.

"I'll be back tomorrow," he said, heading for the door.

"Hasta maana," said Sands cheerfully, and he smiled until his teeth hurt, until El's footsteps had stopped sounding on the stairs. Until he could drop to his knees on the ugly rag rug and bite his lip until it bled.

El wouldn't hear him moan above the noise from the bar.

Sands grinned to himself in the darkness. He'd freak out again. Sure thing. Next time El came by to change the dressings and finger-fuck his skull, he'd freak out again.

He was looking forward to it.

-end-

**Author's Note:**

> All italicised quotations are from "Me Gustas Tu" by Manu Chao (Sands may think it's Mexipop, but it's European) and "La Vida Loca" (original Spanish version) by Ricky Martin.


End file.
